MUMBAI: At least eight million viewers in South East Asia and Taiwan followed Steven Spielberg's epic saga Taken on Star Movies. In India, however, the show has singularly failed to capture the imagination of the viewer thus far.
 

TAM data for the six metros SEC AB 4+ for the first two episodes which aired on 12 and 19 October at 9 pm, paint a gloomy picture. The series drew a TVR of just 0.13 and 0.22. The only good news is that slightly more people watched the second episode. So there is still hope for the broadcaster that the science fiction themed show will pick up as it goes along.

It would appear as though a Star Movies multimedia campaign which worked so well for the Academy Awards and for the Made In iIndia band which aired in the same time slot as Taken has failed for once. There were hoardings in the days leading up to the premiere. Some of the most innovative and invigorating television spots on the channel involved Taken. They had given the impression that the only thing one could expect was the unexpected.

Making things worse is the fact that HBO which repeated Top Gun and Universal Soldier The Return for the umpteenth time got higher ratings of 0.19 and 0.35 respectively.

As mentioned earlier, the story for the rest of Asia was very different. Peoplemeter viewing data indicates that the first TV series ever shown on Star Movies, registered two million viewers in Mega Manila. In Taiwan, over 5.5 million people were willingly abducted by the series and over one million Taiwanese fans were tuning in each week.